jali
asked
Lian Tanner:
Hello Ms Tanner, I just finished your book ‘Museum of Thieves’, and I thought it brilliant. It was such a fun read, I absolutely loved it. Ive been wanting to write a book that is sort of in the same fantasy genre, and I was wondering if you have any tips for writers specifically writing inside that genre? Thank you so much! :)
Lian Tanner
Hi Ava, thanks for your very nice comments – I really appreciate them. One of the most important things if you're writing fantasy is to ground your work in reality. You have to convince people that the world you've created is real, so you use real details. And you do a lot of research. For example, I read a fantasy a while ago where the heroine – who had already been established as not particularly strong – tossed a broadsword up into the air and caught it. I pretty much stopped reading at that point, because I had lost confidence in the author. If they had done their research, they would have known that broadswords are HEAVY.
I've read any number of books where the hero or heroine is galloping a horse across country on a moonless night. Again, that's not going to happen, which the author would have realised if they'd done their research and actually gone out into the countryside when there was no moon.
Of course you can't research things like brizzlehounds, but you can research Great Danes. You probably can't research your terror at the thought of having your hometown invaded by a violent army, but you can remember a time when you were frightened, and what that felt like, and magnify it ten times.
The other way of grounding a fantasy is to use real sense details. So this may be a strange world, but there will still be smells and sounds that we recognise. The wind will feel the same on our skin, and the sun and the rain. In fact, in a fantasy these things are more important than ever, to make the reader feel as if they are in the story.
So they would be my two main tips: 1, get your sense details right – not too many of them, but just enough to make the reader feel as if they are there. And 2, do your research.
I hope that helps!
I've read any number of books where the hero or heroine is galloping a horse across country on a moonless night. Again, that's not going to happen, which the author would have realised if they'd done their research and actually gone out into the countryside when there was no moon.
Of course you can't research things like brizzlehounds, but you can research Great Danes. You probably can't research your terror at the thought of having your hometown invaded by a violent army, but you can remember a time when you were frightened, and what that felt like, and magnify it ten times.
The other way of grounding a fantasy is to use real sense details. So this may be a strange world, but there will still be smells and sounds that we recognise. The wind will feel the same on our skin, and the sun and the rain. In fact, in a fantasy these things are more important than ever, to make the reader feel as if they are in the story.
So they would be my two main tips: 1, get your sense details right – not too many of them, but just enough to make the reader feel as if they are there. And 2, do your research.
I hope that helps!
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